


Got To Get Back To My Baby Once More

by AnnetheCatDetective



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies)
Genre: BAMF Hermann Gottlieb, Bondage, Brainwashing, Drift Bond, Drift Sex, Drift Side Effects, Fix-It, Ghost Drifting, M/M, Newt is strong enough, Semi-Public Sex
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-31
Updated: 2018-04-07
Packaged: 2019-04-16 04:50:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,465
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14157129
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Hermann gets the message too late, but he's determined to save his partner. Newt has forgotten how to believe in himself, but he's starting to remember.





	1. The Letter

_ Hey _

 

_ By the time you get this letter, it’s going to be too late. I’m not happy about that, but it’s the only way. I tried to write you before, I tried to tell you in time, I blacked out. Might have seized. I don’t know but I know you didn’t get it. I wasn’t allowed.  _

 

_ I’m allowed to tell you this, if it won’t get to you. I hope you have the chance to read it. I won’t survive any longer than the rest of the world, I know that. I’m okay with that, to be honest. I’m not super keen on living in a world without you, is the thing.  _

 

_ I thought about what if you could join me. Believe me, I wanted it and at the same time I hated the idea. If there was any way of saving you, by bringing you in or by keeping you away, I would, but what kind of world would I even save you for? We could have gone on a little while, but not a natural lifetime. Not by a long shot.  _

 

_ It was too late when I realized what was happening. The blackouts. After a while, I stopped blacking out. Less worrying, maybe, but worse. I could see it all happen and there was nothing I could do. _

 

_ Let me tell you about Alice. I don’t know if you’ve found out about her by the time you’re getting this or not. She’s a segment of kaiju brain. One I’ve been able to keep alive, one I’ve been able to keep stable through multiple drifts. Which is incredible, you know how incredible that is. _

 

_ I wasn’t looking for the kaiju when it started, Hermann. I was only looking for the drift. I had memories I couldn’t access. I went to hypnotherapists, I tried going off meds and that was a big mistake, I tried going on some things that weren’t my meds, that wasn’t such a hot one, either.  _

 

_ I was looking for you. I was looking for you, and I thought if I could get back into the drift the same way… I thought if I could fix up a better rig for it… _

 

_ I should have stayed with the real you. I get that now. I wish I could have gotten to you sooner, the real you could have saved me. Any time I tried to reach out, I’d black out… all my messages to you would get deleted. And I tried, Hermann. And if there’s enough time, if you’ve got a bunker and a gas mask, feel free to go through all the messages I sent you and put it all together with the power of hindsight. I didn’t do a half bad job, but I didn’t do a half good job either.  _

 

_ I was looking for you. A version of you that I couldn’t disappoint and couldn’t piss off. Made up of dreams and memories… and the drift gave me that. A version of you I couldn’t drive away. I don’t know how much of it was you, and how much of it was them, using the image of you to manipulate me. By the time I started to question it, there was no way I could stop. I still couldn’t stop. Honestly, my plan for the end of the world is to strap in and spend it with the only version of you that could possibly still love me. If everything goes the way I want, I’ll never feel it happen, I’ll just be in your arms and then… nothing. I’m okay with that. It’s a better death than I deserve.  _

 

_ They won’t let me say anything real to you, I know that because I tried. I tried to get you here. I thought if I could pull you in with me… I don’t know. You wouldn’t wind up like me, but you’d know. You’d know exactly how fucked up I am, and I don’t know. If anyone could do something about it, it would be you. Which is why I can’t talk to you. This won’t send until it’s too late and I don’t know if we’ll see each other again. I don’t know if I want to or not. I’m afraid, which isn’t very punk rock, but I know too much now about how it’s going to happen. Ever since I stopped blacking out, I see too much and I have no control. I don’t want to see anything happen to the real you. What’s left of me can’t take it. So when you get this, don’t come after me. You won’t like what you find, Hermann. And I don’t deserve to touch the real thing now. I’m so sorry I couldn’t tell you it was all I wanted, but it’s the one thing I could never ask for, after what I’ve become. _

 

_ It’s right that it’s a letter, though, isn’t it?  _

_ I love you. _

_ I’m sorry. _

 

_ Yours (everything good that’s left in me), _

_ Newt _

 

\---/-/---

 

Hermann doesn’t get the letter until the world is already saved, until Newt is already in custody, being transported, information he hasn’t been given. 

 

All he really knows, when he retires from the relieved celebrations for a moment to himself, is that Newt was brought in alive, and then he gets the letter.

 

He goes back through the handful of messages Newt had sent him over the years. Early on, their correspondence had been normal. Close enough to it. They should have stayed together… none of this ever would have happened if they had. But it had been too much, in the aftermath of their drift. They spent a solid week clinging to each other and pretending that things could ever be normal. 

 

They’d danced around things. In the end, they’d both been cowards. They could have had something together, but instead he’d let Newt go. The worst part is he knows, he knows as sure as he’s ever known anything, that if he had asked, Newt would have stayed. He couldn’t ask.

 

Newt wanted a version of Hermann that he couldn’t drive away, and Hermann… Hermann had thought it was better for them to part as friends of a sort than to risk having Newt and losing him. More fool him… he should have taken the risk.

 

He can tell when the precursors must have gotten their hooks in Newt, the messages change. The melancholy, the longing, the way he used to sign off by saying ‘I miss you’, one day it all stopped, and the messages became few and far between. He’d assumed it was… natural. Drifting apart, no pun intended. He’d hated himself for not speaking up when he’d had the chance and he’d kept not speaking up because he’d thought it was too late. He had made himself a monk to his work for another decade, and told himself they would never have been allowed happiness together. 

 

Then the strange messages started. Only Hermann hadn’t thought they were that strange, he’d thought it was all he rated anymore. Memes and links to articles and offers to get together sometime if it ever worked out, the way you say you have to have dinner with an old friend you’re never going to really meet with. Newt sent him a playlist once, and Hermann’s heart had been in his throat at first, but it was… strange, disjointed. It wasn’t romantic, not the whole thing, it didn’t seem to have much to do with the two of them. It didn’t even seem like Newt. 

 

Now he understands why. It was a message, the only way Newt could think to send it. Through music.

 

Oh, he should have known! He should have thought of it the way Newt would think about it, but he had done his best to shut away those thoughts, to wall off Newt’s shadow presence in his mind, because it only brought pain. 

 

Then Newt asked him to come meet Alice. He was coy about her… about it. The only way he could try to tell Hermann anything. He should have done anything else-- how could Hermann have borne it? How could he have looked at Newt with someone else, a woman no less, happy while Hermann suffered from the lack of him?

 

He had assembled a playlist of his own to send back, and then he hadn’t sent it. It was… petty, and raw, and too open. Adele, Carly Simon, what had he been thinking? He might as well have written ‘I love you still and the thought of you happy with somebody else guts me, I will not visit you’.

 

Alice… Did he name her because she took him through the rabbit hole? Or did he have some other reason, or did he pull the name out of thin air? Did it matter?

 

Listening to the music again, Hermann cringes at how clear it is. But then, now he knows so much. How could he have guessed then?

 

He winces, the word ‘mindfuck’ sneered into his ears, and he yanks out his earbuds, stomach churning. He doesn’t need to torment himself with the rest. He needs to find out where Newt is being kept.

 


	2. Ain't Got Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Things have stood between Hermann and Newt for ten long years, and caused more trouble than Hermann ever could have imagined. Nothing is going to stand between them now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (yeah this is the smutty chapter. Well, the first smutty chapter)

They don’t tell him where Newt is when he asks, but he had been prepared for that. There’s no protocol for a thing like this… no one really knows what to do. Hermann only knows what must be done.

 

They don’t tell him where Newt is when he asks, but they don’t have to. The information is all there. Hermann doubts the PPDC could hide anything from him if it tried, not if he had half a mind to find it. 

 

There’s a guard posted, when he reaches the special holding cell, a young man Hermann doesn’t know who moves to block him.

 

“That’s my partner in there. I am going to talk to him.” 

 

“All due respect, Doctor Gottlieb, but you’re not. We don’t know much about what we’re up against here, and--”

 

“I don’t think you heard me. Perhaps you simply didn’t understand. But I am going to talk to him. If you are not prepared to shoot me, then you are not going to stop me.” Hermann says, muscle at the corner of his jaw leaping, his chin jutting forward. He grips the handle of his cane a little harder and tries to center his weight. “And if you are going to shoot me, then you had better shoot to kill, because if I am alive, I am coming back, and whoever stands between me and that door is going to be in a coma. Do I make myself clear?”

 

He does. There’s a moment where he thinks the man really is prepared to shoot him-- he watches him shift his rifle nervously and then his weight. Hermann is ready-- to try, at least, and die trying if he must. If he had swallowed his wounded pride and aching heart the first time Newt invited him over, then he could have saved him before it was too late… he owes him something now. And if he can’t give him that-- for himself as much as for Newt-- then what’s it all worth? Anyway, he doesn’t think he’s going to die. He doesn’t think the guard wants to shoot him, he’ll hesitate even if he raises his gun, Hermann will knock it away with his cane, bring all his weight down on the right instep, shoulder against the sternum, elbow up to the throat…

 

In the end, none of that is necessary. 

 

“You’re not permitted inside, Doctor Gottlieb, but I think I can trust a man of your position to watch this door until my replacement gets here for her shift.” The young man says, throat bobbing around a nervous swallow as he shoulders his rifle. 

 

“Of course. A man of my position can remain posted a few minutes here. You would be entirely correct in that. After all… I don’t have the security clearance to enter without your key.”

 

He sees the young man feel for his key card before making himself scarce, relieved to find it still clipped in place.

 

Hermann hasn’t needed someone else to give him security clearance in a long time. His own key card opens the door.

 

The sight of Newt is a punch to the gut, the breath rushes out of him. They aren’t even treating him like he’s human… strapped to the chair like that in this dank, ugly little cell… It wasn’t him-- they have to know it wasn’t him. He’ll make sure that they do, he’ll get Newt out. For now… 

 

He sees to it that the door will not open easily, should someone else come calling. He sees to it the security cameras won’t run. 

 

The sight of Newt is… There are other feelings, which Hermann is not ready to probe at yet, seeing him like this. But the eyes that meet his are not Newt’s, the light in them is not Newt. 

 

Had that been why he had worn those tinted lenses before? Had the precursors known they wouldn’t be able to fool him? Or was it simply another little affectation, a part of their faulty disguise?

 

He strides to the chair and takes Newt’s face in one hand, leaning down until their eyes are level, meeting the cold, half-curious gaze of the precursors without flinching.

 

“Give me my partner back, you son of a bitch.” He snarls. 

 

For a moment they only look back at him through Newt’s eyes, measuring. They hold still in a way that Newt never could. Even strapped down like this, Newt could never be so still, his eyes could never be so… dispassionate. 

 

Suddenly, Newt wrenches his eyes shut, a sob tearing its way out of him, and he turns his head to the side-- or tries to, except Hermann’s grip on his chin and his jaw holds him steady, and there’s nowhere for him to go anyway.

 

“Newt.” Hermann breathes his name out. He has never been a praying man, but this feels like it is a prayer. He presses their foreheads together. The ache travels up his back and he ignores it, ignores the tremor in his hand. “My Newt…”

 

“No, no, no, no…” It comes out a high pitched whine, and Newt is shaking even harder, but Hermann stays right where he is. His grip softens, his hand slides to wrap around, to stroke at Newt’s jaw and neck as best he can, to soothe. 

 

“It’s you… it’s you. I should have known before, I should have seen… But this is you.”

 

“Hermann…”

 

He breaks away, only so that he can pull out a handkerchief and wipe away Newt’s tears. He pockets it again and reaches towards one wrist.

 

“Let me look at you--”

 

“NO!” Newt recoils, clenches up, and Hermann freezes. “No, no, Hermann, no, they’re still here, they wouldn’t give me back to you if I was useful, but I’m not. As long as I’m here, tied down, I mean immobile-- as long as you don’t tell me things-- But they’re still here, and if you let me go even for a second-- Hermann, if I hurt you again, I--”

 

He has a point, damn the man. Hermann nods. He would like to free just one hand, to let Newt touch him, to let Newt prove to himself no real damage was done. To let Newt see that Hermann trusts him, the real him… but of course there’s a risk, if Newt was able to unstrap the other side while under the precursors’ control… 

 

“Did they hurt you?” He reaches instead for Newt’s face, fingertips gentle over the bruises he finds there. 

 

“The PPDC? Do you blame them?”

 

“I am glad you were brought back to me alive. But it wasn’t you who did this… I know it wasn’t.”

 

“You saved my life. I could have-- I was-- And you-- How many people died because of me?”

 

“Don’t think about that right now.” Hermann admonishes, and he buries his nose in Newt’s hair, kisses the top of his head as fervent as any devotee. 

 

“I don’t have a lot else to think about, Hermann.” Newt’s voice rises and cracks. Hermann kisses the top of his head again. Again. “Hermann, you could have let her stop me.”

 

“I couldn’t have.” He whispers. There’s another pulse of pain, and a tingle that shoots down his left leg and has him bracing himself against the chair. He lets his cane lean against it, and he carefully settles himself on Newt’s lap, holding onto him and to the chair itself to keep from slipping off. The way it’s constructed makes it difficult to find a position where he can stay, it’s not made for this. Not made for any comforts. He kisses Newt’s temple and clings on and lets the pain be.

 

“You should have…”

 

“I could never have.”

 

“You didn’t even fight me.”

 

“No… I didn’t have to fight you, Newt, I had to fight for you. I fought  _ them _ , and you are not them. I’m going to find a way to get them out of your head. I’m going to do that for both of us. Newt, we’ve wasted so much time… we’ve been afraid of all the wrong things. I am tired of being afraid of the wrong things, Newt… I am tired of being alone. We have always belonged together, ever since the start. Somewhere along the way we started lying to ourselves… and we let those lies take root. We let ourselves be afraid when we should have taken some happiness out of this life… we should have done that together.”

 

“It’s too late now.”

 

“It is not too late. I have you-- and I will fight to keep you. I got your letter.”

 

“Oh. That.” Newt licks his lips. He holds himself still, but it is a human stillness, a Newt stillness-- imperfect, beautiful. “I’m sorry… I’m so sorry for everything. I wrote that… I wrote that the night you didn’t come to dinner. They let me, but only if it was scheduled to send later… I, uh, I went back in. I went back in, I mean… shit, Hermann, I know, you know? I’ve known for a while, but… I keep doing it, nothing else-- and like, I mean, I tried some things. Before this, I tried some things. Always had a, always had an addictive personality, but I’d try something and I wouldn’t have the slightest urge to touch the same thing twice. I don’t know why-- maybe it’s you. Maybe it’s the piece of you that rubbed off on me. I’d rather think that, anyway… I’d rather think that. Otherwise it’s all them and I don’t, I can’t, otherwise it’s them and everything I am is just because of them now. They gave me the only thing that… that made me feel--”

 

“Hush… hush. I read your letter, you don’t have to say anything.”

 

“Ever since I left… everything’s felt wrong. The drift felt right. And you were there, even though you weren’t… even though I couldn’t make that work, either. It all worked in the drift. And yeah, I’m aware it was fucked up… More than I can say. But… not in the way that other people are going to think, people who were never there. People who-- People who have always said--”

 

“I know. I know what people say… what I’ve-- And I know what you were looking for. It’s how we’ve always worked… whenever you run towards something, I run from it, and… well, and I suppose the reverse. One of us should have been running towards us… The one time we come to a natural agreement, and it still takes us apart… But I’m not going to make that mistake again.”

 

“You sure it would be a mistake? Now’s a pretty good time to bail on this fuckin’ trainwreck, my dude.”

 

Newt sounds so broken, and all Hermann can do is kiss him again, along his hairline, from one temple to the other, and then down along his cheek, so gentle that he barely feels it himself. 

 

“A mistake I could never recover from. You and I… we have been through something. A lot of somethings. I have loved you so long… been afraid of loving you so long. I will bear my share of the responsibility for everything that has happened.”

 

“You’re not-- Hermann, that’s crazy talk. Look, it was hard, it sucked, yeah we should have been together, but it’s not your job to keep me from being an idiot. It’s not your job to save me.”

 

“It became my job when we drifted… it was a job I wanted, Newt, I wanted to take care of you. I wanted things that I could never ask-- If you will not blame me for the mistakes I made because I was too afraid to ask for your love, then you cannot blame yourself for your own.”

 

“I feel like it’s a pretty big fuckin’ difference.”

 

“We were both just trying to cope. But I know that you would never have let this happen if you had been able to stop it alone. I wish I had understood, when you reached out to me… I’m going to free you now-- don’t panic, I don’t mean physically. I mean from them. I’m going to find a way. When I do… will you trust me? Whatever solution I find, will you embark on it with me together?”

 

Newt nods, and leans into Hermann as much as he can-- which is not much. His chest hitches, and he nods again, hard. 

 

Hermann leans up carefully, tilting his head, until Newt’s lips are able to find his throat. Newt sobs, kissing the faint bruise that the precursors had used him to leave. He seeks out any others, anything over Hermann’s collar, and Hermann moves with him to let him kiss everything.

 

“This place is awful… I’m going to try to have you remanded into my care. Set up in medical, once there’s room there… you’ll still be strapped down until we can fix this thing, drive them out for good, and perhaps a while after that. But it will be a damn sight more comfortable, I’ll see to that. A lot less depressing.” Hermann promises, kissing back, everywhere that he can until their lips finally meet.

 

They had kissed before, once, in a haze. They had agreed to pretend it wasn’t real, that it was only desperation and emotions running high, when they had just cancelled the apocalypse. It had been the most passionate kiss Hermann had ever experienced, and the most pure. 

 

This one… Circumstances aside, oh, this one… 

 

He can’t stop. He braces one foot against the floor and cups Newt’s face in both hands and he kisses him a hundred times, until they are both trembling, until he can feel the tears on his cheeks, until he thinks his leg might give out and send him crashing to the floor if he doesn’t grab onto the chair for leverage. 

 

“I don’t deserve you.” Newt whispers, when their lips do part.

 

“Newton Geiszler, I am exactly what you deserve, for better or worse. We deserve each other. This is the choice we’ve made, and run from, and accepted. If you accept it.”

 

“I’d say I would have to be an idiot to refuse, but… I mean, that’s not really… I’m kind of an idiot either way, huh? And I-- I don’t want-- I don’t want to run from it. I never wanted to run from it. I mean I did. I’m an idiot--”

 

“Hush. You’re brilliant, but… not entirely perfect when it comes to planning.”

 

“Old Hermann would just say ‘yes you are’.”

 

“Mm, well, Old Hermann was not very happy… New Hermann is not very happy, but for entirely different reasons.” He sighs. “You’ve behaved idiotically. I… I cannot say I was not touched, in reading why-- how they got you.”

 

“I thought you’d be creeped out.”

 

“Yes well, next time you won’t imagine I’m any saner than you, will you?” Hermann smooths Newt’s hair gently. “No, I-- I’m only sorry you never did ask the real me. I’d have-- You would not have driven me away.”

 

“Never not driven someone away before.”

 

“Me, Newt. Me. For twenty long years,  _ me _ . Through the worst of our fights and through the even worse absences, me. You cannot drive me away. I will not be moved from your side. Not if you’ll have me.”

 

“Not a big enough idiot to say no to everything I’ve ever wanted, am I?” Newt asks, tilting a sad smile up at Hermann when he stands to redistribute his weight. “You know what sucks?”

 

“I’ve got a sizable list, yes. But go on.”

 

“They’re not gonna let me go just because you fix me… if-- when-- When we fix me. And after all this time, it’s just… it sucks. Because I’d like to do a lot of things with the real you once I’m alone in my head again, and I just… I’m not going to get to, am I?”

 

“Well… it’s going to be difficult. We’ll be necessarily limited until we can prove the precursors are gone, and even then I suppose there is a lot I can’t promise… It depends on what you want to do, and… well, and how long it would take. I am fairly capable when it comes to disabling security cameras.”

 

Newt licks his lips-- not the usual quick nervous flicker, but something deliberate. 

 

“You did that here? Like, now?”

 

“Yes…” Hermann answers slowly, watching the wheels turn. He couldn’t say he wasn’t interested, if Newt were to ask him point blank. He’d been ashamed to think it even for a moment when he’d first seen him, when his thoughts should have been for Newt’s comfort alone, but if this is also for Newt’s comfort…

 

“Would you be able to tell if they brought them back online?”

 

“They can’t. Not without coming here. And the door isn’t going to be easy to open, either. We… we would have some warning.”

 

“Okay. Okay. Um… I mean, we’re not-- the privacy is, you know, compromised.” Newt jerks his head a little. 

 

Hermann strokes his cheek, smiling. “Well. If the precursors don’t like the show, then they can leave. But there’s absolutely nothing they can do, is there? Not if you stay exactly as you are…”

 

“Oh wow… Yes, yeah. I mean, definitely do not unstrap me, getting seduced by an alien pretending to be your boyfriend is a rookie move and, like… only one of us needs to make that mistake. I think it would be… bad, if that happened.”

 

“Oh, Newton, believe me, liebling, I have no intention of unstrapping you for this.” He purrs. “I have had… fantasies, about having you like this. Usually in my fantasies, you’re naked and there is a proper bed involved, but the leather straps are something of a constant.”

 

“Okay. Yes, wow, yeah Hermann, please do that. Please do whatever you want to do to me right now, I am… yeah. I’m down.”

 

“Really?” Hermann blushes, but the firm-looking bulge in Newt’s trousers is a pretty good indicator. “Not too much?”

 

“Remind me to introduce your fantasies to my fantasies sometime, like… preferably without the audience. Although… they kind of already know what my fantasies are like. Ugh that’s embarrassing, right? But, um, yeah. Like, this is good.”

 

Hermann nods, bracing himself carefully so that he can sink down to his knees. The hard floor is hell on them and the strain it’s going to put the rest of him through will be worse, but he can’t regret it, he won’t regret it. Ten years since Newt was in his bed, in his arms, that week they’d spent glued to each other that could have been bliss if they had let it. Twenty damn years since that first letter fueled so many fantasies… not all of them of the leather straps variety. And not all of those had been the same, either, but… well, for now he might as well focus on the one that’s about to become a reality.

 

“Newt?”

 

“Yeah? Um… yes, Sir?”

 

“You don’t have to call me ‘Sir’ if it doesn’t do something for you.” Hermann chuckles warmly, bracing himself on Newt’s thighs. “You’re sure about this?”

 

“I am so sure about this right now, Hermann, I have never been so sure, if you want me to beg--”

 

“No.” He says quickly, reaching up to touch a fingertip to Newt’s lips. His hand slides back down over Newt’s chest before coming to his fly. “No. I want you to be very quiet. You don’t want to get caught, do you?”

 

The likelihood is not high. The walls are thick, the security cameras are down, and whoever is on shift guarding the door doesn’t know that Hermann had come in. Still, there’s something exciting in the idea, and Newt’s eyes go dark and wide at the question. 

 

This is purely Newt… this is the Newt he remembers, who had looked at him just like that after that first kiss… He had been this warm and wanting for a too-brief moment before fear took over and they both turned away. In ten years, Hermann had never forgotten that look, and in ten or twenty more he never would. He’ll carry it in his heart to the grave.

 

“Mine.” He whispers, as he eases Newt’s zipper down, as he works his cock free. “You do not belong to them. No matter how much time they have spent trying to trick you, to use you, to take you, you are not theirs. You belong to earth, not to the anteverse. You don’t belong to them.”

 

“To you. I-- I belong to you.” Newt says, voice close to breaking as Hermann’s lips brush over the head of his cock.

 

“Yes. To me. That’s your choice to make-- I will take care of you, I will take the caring for you very seriously… And I will see you become your own self, your own free self again, and then you will only ever be like this for me when you want to, no one else will touch you, no one else will try to hold you, cage you, keep you, only me.”

 

He resents anyone else touching Newt, being rough with him. He resents the PPDC, even knowing they had no kinder choice. He resents anyone laying a hand or a brainwave on Newt with the intention to cause him pain or distress. He resents the PPDC not immediately letting him come to Newt’s side, when they all know…

 

But that had been why, hadn’t it? The worry that somehow Hermann might betray them for Newt? If they had only let him in, he never would have. He certainly isn’t going to destroy the world over the slight, but he’s not feeling highly motivated to go back to work. Not when Newt is in a cell like this. 

 

He covers Newt’s cock in kisses, in little flicks of the tongue and then longer licks, slow and wet, he wraps his lips around him and hollows his cheeks and does everything he can to take Newt’s mind away from this place, away from what he’d been through. He’ll get him moved, Newt saved the world once, he deserves that no matter how he has been used since… No matter how long it takes to get him freed, he will get him moved. He won’t let him be alone in this place with nothing but the awful things in his head.

 

He draws out his handkerchief when Newt can’t quite keep silent anymore, pulling off him and meeting his eyes, hands taking over.

 

“That’s it, darling, you’re safe with me now, only me… There’s only you and me, and you’re all mine, and we’re safe, the world is safe and it’s ours, you and me, darling boy, it’s all going to be all right now as long as you’re mine…”

 

Newt comes into the handkerchief with the softest little moan, and Hermann gets him cleaned up and tucked back in, zipped up again. He’ll be in unbearable pain later, but now he’s floating on something of a high from this, the satisfaction, the way Newt looks at him… and his own arousal. Which he supposes he’d be foolish to try and get one of Newt’s hands on, under the circumstances, but they are two creative men with an apparent wealth of kinks between them…

 

He manages to get back on his feet, though he needs to lean heavily against the chair. He’s shaky, but it doesn’t matter, not when he touches Newt’s cheek and feels him lean into that touch. When he sees the look on his face, feels the way Newt trembles too.

 

“I love you so much… I love you, I just-- So much, Hermann, and--”

 

“Yes, dear boy, I know… I know, I know, you’re mine. And I am yours… and I have loved you for so long. I have loved you so deeply, I have loved you more than I ever dreamed was possible… I’m going to take care of you, I promise, until you don’t need me to anymore. And perhaps a little longer.”

 

“I want to see you-- can I?” Newt asks, turning to press kisses to Hermann’s palm. It’s about as much as he’s capable of moving. 

 

Hermann nods, and bends to kiss him, ignoring the twinge in his back. It’s bad, but he’s had worse. He’s still braced well enough that he knows the pain isn’t going to drop him. 

 

He has to take his hand from Newt’s cheek, which he’s less eager to do, but he can’t take his other arm from the chair. He brings his hand back up to Newt’s mouth once his own cock is out, and Newt’s mouth falls open easily for Hermann’s fingers. His tongue swirls around them and he moans and sucks.

 

“Don’t swallow-- I need your saliva. Get my hand slick for me.” Hermann orders, and Newt obeys, letting it build up in his mouth. It leaves a trail following Hermann’s fingers from Newt’s lips, until the strand snaps. It would disgust Hermann under any other circumstances, the feel of it, the idea. He never thought mess would be an enticing part of sex before-- quite the opposite, he preferred to minimize it as much as possible.

 

Newt watches him hungrily, though, and it is Newt’s mess, Newt’s and his, that makes all the difference. Hermann strokes himself, plays with himself, and watches the way Newt licks his lips or mouths pleas and praise. 

 

Hermann comes into his handkerchief, and wipes his fingers on a clean corner, and Newt watches just as hungrily. 

 

“Hermann-- Hermann, please.” He groans. 

 

“Please?”

 

“Bring-- bring it here, let me-- let me-- Hermann, let me?”

 

He feels like he’s in a dream, like he isn’t in full control of himself, which isn’t a thought he welcomes under the circumstances, and yet he can’t give any other reason for why he would unfold the handkerchief and bring it to Newt’s face. And yet, to see Newt’s lashes flutter against his cheeks, to see him breathe in the mingled scents of their sex… to see that pink tongue dart out just to taste, just once. The sound Newt makes is  _ indecent _ . Hermann is right there with him.

 

“Filthy boy…” He tuts, but there’s nothing but awe and fondness in it. He folds the handkerchief back up as much as he can before shoving it into his pocket to be dealt with later. He will have to deal with it… he will have to deal with a lot.

 

“Do you have to go?” Newt asks, leaning towards him. 

 

“No, love, no.” Hermann strokes his cheek again, leaning heavily against the chair. “No, I don’t. There must be a guard on the door by now… there’s no sneaking out. I will stay here with you until someone comes to fix the camera and has me removed. And I shall not go quietly.”

 

“Don’t get in trouble for me…”

 

“I will stay here with you until I am removed. And then I will find someone who will listen to reason and have you removed from this hellhole and into a hospital bed. To be treated with dignity! Good heavens, a war hero and a victim of the precursors more than any of the rest of us, and they treat you as a willing conspirator! But I have seen you fight them, Newt, and I know that you are strong enough.”

 

“Hermann, Hermann…” Newt says, but no fuller thought follows. They connect as fully as they can, with Hermann clinging to the chair, leaning heavily against it, his hand moving between Newt’s cheek and his hair, constantly petting as Newt does his best to lean into each touch.

 

They don’t have half the time Hermann would like before he hears the telltale sound of someone working to undo his bypass on the lock. He is in agony already, but he would stay until his only option would be sinking to the floor to rest against Newt’s legs and grit his teeth through the muscle spasms, if only he could have this. If only he could have Newt. They could bring in a second chair and keep him prisoner himself, if only he could have Newt, look at him, speak his name…

 

The door slides open, Lambert scowling on the other side, and he strides in, lets the door close behind him, but for a long moment he doesn’t know what to say.

 

Newt stills despite the hand in his hair, the one he’d pushed into like a cat, and Hermann feels his stomach turn to ice.

 

“No…” He pulls himself around to the front of the chair, leans down despite the protest across the small of his back and the shooting pains up to his neck. “Newton Geiszler, don’t you dare, don’t you leave me now.”

 

“You had your _taste_. Why don’t you go?” The thing inside him jerks its head towards Lambert and the door. “They think they can speak with him. They think he can help them. But I told you before, he’s not strong enough. Did you think he fought us to get to you?”

 

It laughs in Newt’s voice, but nothing about the tone is like Newt, not even at his meanest.

 

“We gave him to you. And we can take him away.”

 

“He is stronger than the lot of you.” Hermann spits the words out, pushing himself up laboriously so that he can whirl on Lambert, clinging to the chair still to allow him to make a sweeping gesture with his cane. “And you-- You, I don’t know what the hell you or anyone else was thinking--”

 

“If you’re going to take the word of the precursors over mine, Dr. Gottlieb, then I’m not the one who needs to get his head examined.”

 

“I am not talking about the word of the precursors! I am talking about the efforts the PPDC has gone through to keep me separated from my Drift partner!” He snaps, jabbing his cane at the man. 

 

“Hold up, Doc, a man you drifted with  _ once _ , ten  _ years _ ago. That’s not the same as a partner.”

 

Hermann gets enough weight centered over his cane so that he can let go of the chair, approaching the other man.

 

“My Drift Partner. Does this mean nothing to you? If someone you had shared your innermost self with was in distress, would you do nothing?” He sneers. “Maybe it’s different when you have a more flexible range of Drift Compatibility. But all I have is him.”

 

“If someone I shared my innermost self with was going to bring the kaiju back to our world, I’d figure it out and kick his ass before he got ten years into his little side project.”

 

“He’s got you there, Hermann.” The thing inside Newt laughs. “You can’t say he didn’t try to warn you. He tried so hard, and we made him delete all those letters until it was too late.”

 

Hermann is reeling from Lambert’s assessment, and for all that the man has not had the best luck with partners in the past, perhaps he’s right. He doesn’t need to be right for it to sting like a physical blow. But the precursor’s words, that brings him back, and he turns to face that thing still lurking in Newt’s body, still making his eyes cold and hard.

 

“No. You didn’t. He sent letters you couldn’t understand. In all the times that you drifted with him, you couldn’t understand. He was smarter than you.” He says, triumphant smile curling across his lips. “He is smarter than you.”

 

“NO.” It-- they roar. It’s not even Newt’s voice anymore, not wholly.

 

“Yes.” He makes his way back over, crowding the chair. “He outsmarted you. I was not… I didn’t understand them. I wasn’t able to get the message, to stop you before. But you did not stop him from sending it. He outsmarted you. And he’ll outfight you.”

 

“Both of you failed!” They jerk against the bonds.

 

“Well that is something else you don’t understand-- though after ten years of drifting with him you really ought to. It didn’t take me ten years to learn that Newt Geiszler is one determined, unbreakable little bastard. And I am his exact match. We haven’t  _ failed _ . We haven’t even  _ started _ with you. You want to know a man who can make your life miserable? Why don’t you search his memories for the ten years we shared a lab. Why don’t you tell me who’s a tougher, madder, more obstinate son of a bitch?”

 

“You’re lying.” It’s Newt’s voice again, but not his real voice. It’s them using his voice. Cocky as the old Newt, but with none of his warmth. “We know him better than you do. We know all of his thoughts. All of his  _ feelings _ .” They sneer. “All of his memories. You claim to be so strong, but you didn’t make him  _ miserable _ .”

 

The precursors have missed Hermann’s point as spectacularly as they both missed Newt’s coded messages. They may know Newt’s feelings and use his vocabulary as their alien-to-human dictionary, but they don’t know the human significance of things. Of memes, of mixtapes, or of misery.

 

Even so, he thinks it is the cruelest thing they could have told him.

 

He hears the door slide open, but he doesn’t turn. He just watches for a flicker of Newt to return, until there’s a hand at his elbow and a gentle voice.


	3. Listen, Mister

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It feels like the precursors and the PPDC are both jerking Hermann around, but he has a plan and he's sticking to it.
> 
> Luckily, someone believes in Hermann as much as Hermann believes in Newt.

“Doc, hey, Doc.” Jake Pentecost takes some of his weight, leading him back a couple of steps to a folding chair. Hermann allows it, though he wishes the chairs were closer, wishes it allowed him to look Newt in the eye. 

 

It’s incredibly uncomfortable, but it’s still a relief. There’s a moment where he wrinkles his nose and stares hard at Hermann, then at Newt, but it passes quickly, and then his expression is… well, it’s exactly as Hermann might have expected it to be, from what he does know of him. 

 

“What are you doing here?”

 

“Well. I figured, when the security feed went down, you’d know how to do that.” He taps his temple. “And I figured… Look, I mean, I know what you went through with him during the war. Someone I was in the Drift with got locked up, even if I only went in once, I’d be there.”

 

“Yes, well why don’t you tell Ranger Lambert that?” Hermann says, craning his neck to glare at the man in question.

 

“That’s Acting Marshal Lambert until they send someone else out here.”

 

“Yeah, that’s Acting Co-Marshal Lambert, and just until the guy from Lima gets here.” Jake says. “What, you wouldn’t bust me out of the joint?”

 

“Haven’t yet… how many times would it be? What is it, Jake?” He sighs. “You think I don’t have this situation handled?”

 

“I think maybe you wouldn’t bust me out of the joint if I was in Doctor Geiszler’s place, but you’d sure as hell want the people locking me up to take it easy on you. That’s the man’s partner.”

 

“It’s not the same--”

 

“Like hell it’s not, you know the Drift doesn’t just leave you. You saying you don’t dream about me sometimes?”

 

“I do not.” Lambert pauses. “Sometimes I’m in a situation and I know what you’d do. Usually that’s when I do the opposite.”

 

“Yeah. Me, too.”

 

“Oh wow, please shut up!” Newt screeches, and it is Newt, the real Newt, and Hermann nearly hits the floor in his haste to get out of his chair and over to Newt’s. “And people tell me I can’t read the room, just take your flirting outside!”

 

“That wasn’t flirting.” Lambert says, clearly startled by Newt’s sudden reappearance.

 

“Dude, I know what two guys flirting sounds like, I fucking know.” Newt glares, then convulses.

 

By the time Hermann has reached him, he’s gone again, but at least now they know he’s still in there. They know Hermann isn’t living on false hope when he says Newt can fight his way back.

 

“That was a bit flirting.” Jake says, little smirk dying away as he moves over to Hermann’s side again-- this time he moves the chair closer for him. 

 

Hermann doesn’t have it in him to complain about being helped without asking for help, not now, when he’s already pushed himself this far.

 

“Sorry, Doc-- Docs.” He murmurs. He gives Newt a long, hard look. “So there really is an innocent man in there, trapped with those things?”

 

“Yes.” Hermann leans forward, ignoring the strain, to place a hand on Newt’s knee. 

 

“What they did… how much does Doctor Geiszler know?”

 

“Newt. Too much. More than he should be burdened with…” 

 

The precursors don’t react at all to Hermann’s touch. They don’t let Newt react. Still, he holds onto the thought that Newt can still feel him.

 

“How much do you know, about how it happened?”

 

“He’s been exposed to them, through the Drift. He… they hooked him on it. He’s managed to keep a brain somehow. You have to understand, this is never what Newt wanted. Not my Newt… _Das_ _würde er nicht tun_. _Mein Freund…_ ” His thumb rubs circles over Newt’s knee, met with nothing but inhuman stillness. “ _Niemals, du bist mein_ _süßer Junge_ \-- Ah. Forgive me. Lost in my own head.”

 

“Well. May not do a world of good, but we can get our hands on that brain.” Jake drops into a crouch next to them. 

 

“It might not do a lick of good, but I will take a great deal of pleasure in performing a vivisection. I know how, now…” He turns back to Newt, to stroking his knee. “If only you could see me. We should give you a front row seat… you’d like that. And those monsters will hate it.”

 

“We don’t care. We can make more, we will always be able to make more. You think he won’t mourn it? More than we will.”

 

“ _ Ich rette dich _ .” Hermann says, softly, seriously. He doesn’t look into Newt’s eyes, not when he will only see their coldness there, but down at where his hand rests on Newt’s knee. “ _ Ich riskiere das alles _ ,  _ weil ich dich liebe. _ ”

 

He turns to Jake. “I’ll Drift with him.”

 

“Hell you won’t.” Lambert says.

 

“They’ve taken root, but if I can get in there, I believe I can help him take control back.”

 

“You’ll have to take that up with a real Marshal.” Jake shakes his head. “Even if I could authorize you, I wouldn’t. Got to follow the big man’s lead.” He jerks a thumb back towards his own partner. “I don’t know half enough about this to say I think you’d be safe in there. And we need one of you.”

 

“Putting you in his head puts you at risk. You go in there on my watch and you’re going to find yourself strapped in right next to him.”

 

“Good.” Hermann snaps. “This place is inhumane. He shouldn’t be here alone.”

 

“You wanna talk about inhumane, let’s talk about what your boy did.”

 

Hermann pushes himself up, whirling to face him. “ _ My boy did nothing _ ! My  _ boy _ \-- he is a  _ doctor _ , a  _ polymath _ , a  _ war hero _ , he is not a ‘boy’, he is an accomplished man, a good man-- is a prisoner in his own mind! He has struggled and suffered for  _ ten years _ , at the hands of the precursors. Now you may call them inhumane, inhuman! But you do  _ not _ say to me that the man who risked everything to save this world, that he is to blame for any of this.”

 

“How many times did he drift with that kaiju brain?”

 

“I don’t know.” Hermann bristles. “I don’t  _ care _ . But you have one thing right, he is mine, my partner, and I demand better treatment than this.”

 

“You can take that up with the new Marshal.”

 

“Believe me, I will.” He returns to his chair, defiant. “You may lock us in when you go.”

 

“No, we will not. We’re not equipped-- You are not a prisoner.”

 

“If you need a reason to lock me up, feel free to come over here. Hitting the acting co-Marshal with a blunt instrument is reason enough, I would imagine?”

 

“Well, then I would lock you up in your own cell. Two can play at the petty asshole game, Doctor Gottlieb. But I don’t really want to lock you up and you don’t really want to hit me.”

 

“I think he really wants to hit you.” Jake says.

 

“Yeah, I’d have to agree.” Newt’s voice says, though it’s with that empty, mocking tone of the precursors using his voice. 

 

“Until the real Marshal is here, your contact with Doctor Geiszler is limited.” Lambert says, though when he comes around to remove Hermann physically if necessary, some of that stern military facade fades, and he looks like what he is-- a young man who has just seen catastrophic loss. “This is for your safety, too. The last thing you need is those things messing with your head. Doc… you can’t save him if you’re compromised.”

 

“If you want me out of this room, you can have me dragged out. I won’t resist. But I will not leave under my own power. I will not.”

 

“Why don’t you say your goodbyes?”

 

At this point, Hermann can only just hold himself up for the pain, especially to bend over Newt at his chair. He sees a flicker, but the precursors are keeping their hold…

 

“What’s the matter, Hermann? You didn’t get enough?” They laugh. 

 

Hermann just rests their foreheads together.

 

“ _ Ich bin gleich wieder da, ja _ ?  _ Du gehörst  _ mir _ … Liebe meines Lebens. Ich schwöre, ich lasse dich nicht allein _ . I know you still hear me. I know you still feel me. I will fight for you… and I will fight with you.”

 

Newt stirs, just enough for Hermann to know he’s there, and his voice is small and soft.

 

“You’d do that…?” Newt manages, Hermann can hear the strain in his voice as he fights past the control over him. Ten years back and for just a moment it could be yesterday-- for just a moment it’s  _ now _ . They exist for just a moment in that ten-years-ago, and Hermann knows that Newt understands what it is he’s truly promising him. What maybe the others wouldn’t want, but what no Marshal will stop him from.

 

Newt breathes hard, shakes, and then goes still.

 

“Goodbye, Doctor Gottlieb.” The precursors regard him cooly through Newt’s eyes, when Jake takes his arm and gently pulls him away. “If your Marshal denies that foolish request of yours, maybe we will grant you another… pitiful few minutes of him.”

 

They smirk, tilting Newt’s head to the side, a look that’s so off from Newt’s own smirk, and Hermann feels his face go red. He lets himself be half-carried from the cell, and then walked back to the lab.

 

There are stricter orders keeping him away from Newt, after that. It doesn’t matter. As soon as they have a new Marshal, Hermann will make them see reason. He’ll get Newt back. And if they tell him no, well… if Newt had been able to do it once, then Hermann can do it now, set up an unauthorized Drift.

 

He is waiting in anticipation of the new Marshal’s arrival, but he had not expected to be summoned for a meeting, he’d thought he would have to fight for this. Instead, he’s brought to an office, treated with the respect he’s spent the last twenty years earning instead of like a potential co-conspirator with the precursors himself.

“I’d ask how you’ve been, but I think I’ve heard enough to figure that one out.”

Hermann snaps into a salute. “Marshal Choi.”

“C’mon, brother, not between old friends.” Tendo comes around the desk, pulling him into a firm hug. “Hear you’ve been itching to talk to me.”

“I am more grateful to talk to  _ you _ than I can say.” He sinks into a chair as soon as Tendo steps back to let him. “They told you about Newt… What did they tell you about Newt?”

“Solo drifting with a kaiju brain did something to him. Infected him. Took him over.” Tendo shrugs, hopping up onto the desk and reaching for the cup of coffee his hip had nearly knocked into. “And he’s the reason everything went down.”

“The precursors are the reason. Newt is their prisoner. Inside his own mind… they let me speak with him, but… I thought-- I thought I might have had him back, then… I thought he might have fought his way free. We have the brain in question. I have not yet been permitted to destroy it. Doing so… would not free him.”

“No. Not if they’re in his head now…” 

“He is still in there, Tendo. I can reach him. I can push them out again. I can do that if I can get back inside his mind.”

Tendo frowns a moment, then nods slowly.

“Maybe you could. They’re not going to like it, Hermann. Whatever hold they have in there, they’re going to defend it. So this is how we’re going to do it-- you will be fully monitored going into this thing, and if anything looks wrong, we pull the plug on it and we pull you out. You’re putting your brain on the line… I’m not letting you do that in a holding cell with a bunch of stolen parts. Newt’s being transferred up to a space in medical right now.”

Hermann pushes himself to his feet, practically shaking. “They’re moving him?”

“Yeah, saw your request for that one when I came in, first thing I did.”

“Where-- Where is he now, is he there? I need to go, I need to see him--”

“Slow down.” Tendo holds a hand up, sliding off the desk to come stand at Hermann’s side. “We’ll go in a minute. When they’ve finished moving him and strapping him into place-- you don’t want to see him like that.”

“I saw how they were keeping him before, I can handle seeing them move him.”

“Get anything that you think might bring him back to himself if the Drift doesn’t work. Pictures of his family, you got pictures of his family? Anything like that. Anything to help him fight. We can’t go into this without a Plan B. Meet me here once you have something personal and we’ll go.”

Hermann salutes again, before rushing off. Having a job to do helps, though he would rather be with Newt, no matter how hard it may be to see him possessed and manhandled. Still, he does have pictures of Newt’s family, Newt with his family… and he has some personal items. Things he’s kept for so long, hoping… hoping someday Newt would just come back, maybe. Now there’s a purpose.

He struggles to carry the box up to Newt’s new place in medical, but he doesn’t allow anyone to carry it for him. This is their life, or a life they could have had. It is his burden to bear.

Newt is strapped down to a bed, and in the harsh, bright light, he looks frail, frailer than he had in the cell. Hermann finds a place to set the box, moving to Newt’s side. He is still, expression cold, but Herman strokes his face anyway.

“I am here now.” He says softly.

“You’re not asking for him back with an audience, are you, Hermann? Kinky. But then… that’s not really a surprise, is it?”

“I am not asking. I am taking him back. We are taking him back-- together.”

They laugh.

“Forget about it, Hermann. You can have your little playdates if you want to. You think it will remind him how to fight? He lost the will for that a long, long time ago. And you’re… well, you’re kind of the reason why. But now we have the power to give him the real thing. Just if he’s good. Just if he doesn’t fight. We can reward him or we can punish him. And Hermann, dangling you over his head, that’s the sweetest prize of all. We admit, we thought you might be a threat at first. But you might just be an asset. For some reason, he’d sell your pitiful little world for five minutes of you. He’d let it all burn. And… you would do the same, wouldn’t you? You’ll let it all burn for him.”

“No.”

“HE ALREADY DID!” They roar, straining against the bands, laughing. “HE ALREADY DID. YOU’RE SO WEAK, YOU’LL FALL JUST LIKE HE DID!”

“Why don’t we see who is weak?” Hermann takes a squid cap, carefully fitting it to Newt’s head when it stills again. The precursors are still laughing through him, but they’re using his voice again. 

“Sure. Come over and see how we’ve redecorated the place.”

“I’ll bring your eviction notice.” He says calmly, but he has to take a moment, has to press his hand over Newt’s heart before he can step away and submit to the nurses and techs. " _Ich rette dich_. "  


They put him in a bed next to Newt’s, hook him up to far too many things. 

“You ready?” Tendo asks. Hermann has the trigger to initiate the Drift, but the techs have a kill switch to pull him back out again.

“I have been ready for this… for a long time.” Hermann closes his eyes, and pictures his Newt’s face.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things Hermann says in German:
> 
> -He wouldn't do that. My (friend/boyfriend).  
> -Never. You're my sweet boy.  
> -I'll save you. I'll risk everything, because I love you.  
> -I'll be back soon, okay?  
> -You're mine. The love of my life. I swear I'm not leaving you alone.


	4. Couldn't Live Without Me No More

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They Drift. 
> 
> It's all right that it's not enough. Hermann has a Plan B, and even if he didn't, tomorrow is another day.

Everything is washed in blue when Hermann hits the trigger button. There is a distant scrabbling, as if he was in the center of a vast greenhouse, and a million tiny claws scratched at the glass, a million tiny voices shrieked at it in vain, but for a beautiful moment, all that is far away. It is not like their first Drift, he is not assaulted by the hivemind directly even if he can feel it beating at Newt.

 

He is surrounded by Newt instead. He sees and feels moments in a rush that can’t be sorted through and he knows things. He feels Newt’s indignant rage and all-consuming terror at the precursors’ attempts to keep them apart-- the precursors’ attempts to kill Hermann. 

 

Attempts. Hermann hadn’t even noticed the first time. 

 

“You fought them.” He reaches for Newt, sees him there now in a calm sea of blue. No more rush of memories, only the two of them in this liminal space. And it is Newt-- skinny jeans, an MIT shirt so faded and worn that it seems on the verge of falling apart, his old glasses and a hint of stubble and his tattoos bright and vibrant even when all is tinted blue. His jewelry, his boots-- and the extra bit of height they give him. The truest version of Newt which could possibly exist, the one that lives inside his own mind. 

 

“Hermann.” Newt steps into his arms, holds him tight. This time, there is no twinge in his lower back when Hermann ducks down to bury his face against Newt’s chest. He feels the softness of the shirt against his cheek and the solid warmth of Newt’s body, though those things are no more material than he is. 

 

“You fought them for me. You won.”

 

“Once. I couldn’t… I still wasn’t strong enough to keep them from hurting you.”

 

“You did enough, I’m here now. And you can do it again.”

 

“Hermann, I could have killed you. And they could still hurt you… and I don’t-- I don’t want them to  _ touch _ you here.”

 

“I’m not afraid. Take me deeper. Take me into you. And I will help you fight them.”

 

“Hermann…” Newt gnaws at his lower lip. Here, in a place forged by his connection to Hermann alone, he can lean on him. He can get some distance from the constant barrage… the closest thing to peace he’s had in more time than Hermann can think about. And now he is asking him to go back, to leave this tiny refuge, but it’s the only way. They can’t live in the Drift. 

 

He straightens, his hand moving to the side of Newt’s face, a soft, fond smile coming across his face. “My mind to your mind. Your thoughts to my thoughts.”

 

“You fucking nerd.” Newt laughs, and Hermann  _ aches _ with how he’s missed that laugh. “At this point I really don’t think you have to mind meld with me.”

 

“Take me… bring me in. Every place they’ve touched, I want to rip them out of you. I want every last trace of these monsters destroyed, they could not have let it end, they had to take you… The best, the brightest, the most doggedly optimistic man ever to fight them, they had to take you.”

 

“Since when have I been the best… like… whole person?”

 

“Since I have known you, or longer.” Hermann cups his face in both hands now. “The sacrifice you have made… the years you have suffered… How could I think otherwise?”

 

“Well, I almost destroyed the planet, so--”

 

“You never did. That was them.”

 

“I fought harder just to let you live an hour or two more than I ever fought to stop them destroying the world.” Newt admits, tearing up. “Some good man. Some hero.”

 

“My hero.” Hermann whispers, kissing him softly. “I know, Newton… I know about the blackouts, the gaps, I know about all the time you couldn’t fight if you had tried. And I know how painful it has been when you have tried. I know so much right now and you have to believe me, you are still my hero. You were my hero, with your hands around my throat, struggling against their control with everything they had, believing you weren’t strong enough and fighting like hell for me just the same, Newt, I have felt it now. Every thought that went through your head has flashed through mine, I know. You are still my hero. Please… let me be yours.”

 

“You have been. Since you looked at me bleeding on the floor of the lab and said ‘fuck it, I’m going in with him’. Since the letters. Man, since the letters. When they said… when they told you I was sick of the way no one ever took me seriously, I mean maybe that’s not wrong-- not worth, like, destroying a planet over, but not wrong-- but they left out the part where you did. And… and I’ve known, I’ve known for ten years now, when you said I was crazy, you only ever meant ‘I don’t want you to hurt yourself’. I wish I had seen it.”

 

“I wish I had seen how determined you were… I would have gone with you first. They never could have gotten you alone…”

 

“Doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter… no more what ifs, dude, I can’t take it. You made it work, though, you saved it all from-- from--”

 

“From them. Not from you.” Hermann kisses him again. “I am… I am so grateful to have you back. Everything has been a nightmare without this feeling… without you.”

 

“You sure you wanna go deeper?”

 

“I’m sure.” He nods. He’s ready to face in real time the onslaught Newt has been living with. He’s ready to pick up the fight.

 

“Okay.” Newt takes a deep breath, and reaches up to take both of Hermann’s hands in his. 

 

It isn’t quite chasing the rabbit, there isn’t one-- Newt isn’t taking him to a memory, but to a place inside his mind, and for a moment it feels like falling through the blue, hearing the scrabbling and the screeching grow unbearably loud and then suddenly silent.

 

They’re in full color, when Hermann is able to take in his new surroundings. A bedroom, though it’s certainly not his and it hardly seems like it could be Newt’s. Oh, as a boutique hotel room, it’s something Newt would like, something he would stay in for a weekend and take pictures of and brag about. But there are no bookshelves stuffed with manga and kaiju figures and biology journals. There’s no overflowing clothes hamper with band tees piled up around, the bed is only artfully rumpled and not the mess Hermann knows Newt’s bed would be-- Newt can’t lie still when he sleeps alone, he’d said as much in those early days as they’d come down from the Drift hangover, he had only ever been so still at night with Hermann…

 

The colors aren’t even Newt’s favorites. It is hip, but it is soulless. 

 

“Where are we?”

 

“I don’t even know sometimes. It’s where they put me.” He shrugs. “Where they put me when I go in and when I ‘deserve’ it, when I can escape the constant shrieking, they’re always so loud except when I would Drift and then it was peaceful, and I know, Hermann, I know it only made things worse, but it’s the only time they’re ever quiet, and it doesn’t hurt, and instead of all the bad thoughts and the struggles, it was good… Hermann… I don’t know what you’re going to see. I don’t-- I don’t know how they’re going to show themselves to you, or what they’ll do, or if they’ll try to attack…”

 

“I’m ready.”

 

He isn’t, as it turns out. He had been ready for a lot of things, but not for the bathroom door to open and for a thirty-four year old Hermann Gottlieb to emerge, barely blue-tinged and stark naked.

 

“Welcome home, dear.” It says to Newt, bedroom eyes and all. In Hermann’s voice-- or what his voice might sound like, in old recordings. To his own ears, it seems very wrong, but then so does the whole thing. The haircut he’d had, his face less lined-- marginally-- his body…

 

There were some liberties taken with his body. One liberty taken. One very hard liberty.

 

“Okay, so the usual.” Newt says. When Newt had written to him that he had been seeking their connection in the Drift, building up a relationship, being used, Hermann had been prepared to find it flattering, touching, a missed opportunity for the real thing. Seeing it with his own eyes, it’s horrible. 

 

“You must have missed me.” The thing with Hermann’s face purrs, moving closer. “It’s been so long… but I’m always here waiting for you. I’m always waiting right here to make it right again. Poor darling boy… so turned around, always struggling when you should just relax… But I can make it right again. I can make all that pain go away.”

 

Hermann feels sick. Not just the double itself, or even the knowledge that it’s the precursors using it to control Newt, but the tone it uses, the words it chooses. The way that even now, Newt sways towards it at the promise of having his pain taken away… And worse, the memory of visiting him in his cell, of thinking he could take the pain away for a little while-- of giving into the frisson of heat that seeing Newt strapped down had given him, giving into the urge to lay out all those old fantasies… to talk to his poor, darling Newt the way these monsters have been talking to him, to step into the place they had made themselves in his mind in order to try to control him…

 

“Wait.” Newt jerks back from the thing with Hermann’s face, from reaching out for it even with Hermann right there. “Do you honestly think you’re anything like them? Do you not remember me asking you about the security cameras? Because I’m pretty sure I brought up how much it would suck not to, like… get to touch each other. I’m pretty sure that was all me.”

 

“How much of me have they been using to hurt you?”

 

“I don’t know, dude, but I asked for this, too. You think I didn’t? You think a bunch of aliens came up with the idea of tricking me into subbing for a version of you that only existed in my mind because aliens are just super into kinky sex? Or do you think I was desperate and lonely and when I went looking for something, they took my idea and ran with it?”

 

“We all deserve some credit.” The thing takes one more step closer, though this time Newt recoils from its outstretched hand, clinging to Hermann instead. “We couldn’t have built such a convincing facade if you hadn’t left something behind, rattling around in his brain for us to pick through and use. And he did beg for it… So desperate to be loved. So desperate to be a good boy for us… If we moved the way you moved, spoke the way you spoke, he was so eager to believe it was real. That he had captured the one moment in which you could have truly loved him, and saved it for eternity.”

 

“And you… you told him it was only emotions running high in the moment, only memories of a time before we fought… You told him-- Even before ‘Alice’, you were telling him…”

 

“That he was worthless? That you couldn’t love him? We didn’t have to try very hard, did we?” It reaches out and grabs for Newt’s chin, and he gives into the touch easily, though his hand never leaves Hermann’s arm, even as he sways into the hold with a moan. “He already believed that. We just had to whisper… He knew our secrets. He was already humanity’s expert in production, and now he knew our secrets. All he needed was a brain. Something small, something that couldn’t overwhelm his pitiful neurons. If he could connect to it, he would find you. The version of you that would love him…”

 

“Get your filthy hands off him.” Hermann grabs for its wrist, and it pulls away, laughing, leaving Newt to choke back a bitter sound and wipe at his chin as if he could banish the memory of the touch.

 

“No filthier than yours, are they? But we can compromise… It makes no difference to us. This is not a matter of  _ lust _ , but control. Now that you have taken away the brain, that access to this pure space we have made for pleasure… we can still offer him you. A few pitiful minutes of you… a few pitiful minutes of  _ freedom _ . As long as he stops fighting when we want control. You can have him. You can have your little conjugal visits… but only if Newt is a good boy who does as he’s told…”

 

“Don’t, don’t say it like that, don’t say it like that…” Newt tugs at his hair, voice rising and falling. He breaks away from Hermann now, pacing the room, so much like the worst of those bad days in the lab, days where Hermann sometimes wondered if he would need to stop him banging his head against the walls as failures and losses piled up on them both. They had handled the stresses differently, but by the end of the war, dealing with Newt’s bad days had become as familiar as dealing with his own. They couldn’t admit to caring, and yet there had always been caring acts. Now that all the words are there, now that he doesn’t need to hide his emotions, there’s no action he can take. All he can do is try to fight for him.

 

“The PPDC is never going to free him so long as you have a purchase on his mind, what even is the point of this now? He has no power to help you.”

 

“The point?” It laughs. “The point? Now you will feel  _ upset-alone-work ruined _ ! Now you have been betrayed from within your own mind, now you have lost so much work! You have lost resources, bodies, workrooms! You violated our mind and we are returning the favor! Why should we stop your suffering? Because it does not profit us? Your suffering is our profit now. We have nothing else left, we will not give this up so easily.”

 

Hermann strides over, slapping the thing across the cheek. It may have little effect, but it certainly feels satisfying.

 

“And neither will we! You don’t need to  _ let  _ him surface. He is strong enough to fight you. And you do not get to use my face, my voice, to tell him to be a good boy, how-- how  _ dare _ you pervert the thing we could have had, how dare you? How dare you come between us for ten  _ years _ , ten years I could have been his! Flesh and bone-- however faulty!-- and  _ real _ . Ten years I could have loved him, but you… you have whispered in his ear and told him otherwise.”

 

“Flesh and bone… However faulty indeed. Of course he doesn’t like it, if we forget to move like you, but he doesn’t complain when we have none of your pathetic human limitations in bed. You must be wondering… were you a disappointment? Second-best?”

 

“No.” Newt says weakly, grabbing for Hermann’s arm again. “No, it’s not like that…”

 

“You must wonder if you can give him what he truly desires. We know we can.”

 

“No.” A look of sheer dread washes over Newt’s face, his voice barely comes out now. “Please don’t.”

 

The thing wearing Hermann’s face-- and most of Hermann’s body-- straightens up as if in preparation. And then it does the thing it was preparing to do.

 

Nothing has ever horrified or disgusted Hermann so viscerally-- his nightmares about what visions they both witnessed of the Anteverse are a comfort next to what he sees now, as the thing wearing his face and a partially-faithful recreation of his body begins to change. Bright blue eyes tear themselves open at the points of its naked shoulders, still so much like Hermann’s shoulders. Its jaw stretches and then splits, strange blue tongue unfurling. When he looks down to avoid that, he’s met with an even more hideous transformation below the waist-- though at least that had never looked quite like him.

 

It extends a taloned hand to Newt. More eyes open at the jut of its cheekbones, Hermann’s cheekbones, and he scrubs and scratches at his own face to banish the phantom feeling there.

 

“Come.” It says, though it should not be able to speak.

 

Newt almost does, he begins to, and then he catches himself, turning guilt-stricken eyes up towards Hermann.

 

“I know this looks bad…”

 

Hermann can’t really answer that. He feels sick, he can only grimace in horrified nausea. ‘This looks bad’ is what you say when your partner walks in on you exploring some potentially deviant but ultimately pedestrian fetish, there are no words for seeing your partner’s kaiju hybrid version of you. 

 

“I mean this part is new. Well, recent. Well-- only the last couple months.” Newt babbles, returning to cling to Hermann’s arm. “It was just you, normal you, for, for all these years, it wasn’t like this, I wasn’t--”

 

“You weren’t what?” It laughs, which it also should not be able to do. “A filthy kaiju  _ groupie _ ?”

 

Newt is beginning to hyperventilate, tears rolling down his face no matter how Hermann tries to soothe him. Hermann can feel the echo of his emotions-- shame, fear, disgust… and want. Waves of confusion and horror and complacency as he grapples with the echoes of Hermann’s own thoughts and feelings, as he grapples with how outside normal his own normal has been.

 

“Get out.” Hermann orders, staring the thing that no longer wears his face faithfully. “Now.”

 

The thing blinks at him, the six eyes across its face and shoulders out of sync, just slightly.

 

“You think you can stop us? By… what? Neurally slapping a face that has never existed in the physical world? Go right ahead and hit us again. But when you go, we will be here. We will speak as we please. And he will be our good boy if we please. Or he will remember that we can punish as easily as we can reward.”

 

Hermann screams and launches himself forward, in inarticulate rage. His hands close around its-his throat.

 

The world warps around him, his hands are fisted in the scratchy blanket of a hospital bed, everything is beeping around him, it’s too bright…

 

“What did you do?” He pushes himself up. 

 

“The monitors were going crazy, we had to--” Tendo starts, as Hermann hurries to Newt’s bed, pulling off Newt’s squid cap without a thought for his own.

 

“Newt, Newt… Newt, come back to me.” He leans over him, stroking his face. “Dammit, why did you do that?”

 

“Hermann…” Tendo’s hand lands on his shoulder, steady, but he doesn’t pay him any mind. 

 

Newt is still and silent a long moment, as Hermann’s shaking hands brush over his cheeks and card through his hair, as he braces the top of one thigh against Newt’s bed to be able to hold the position he wants to be in, bent over him, close to him.

 

When his eyes snap open, it’s the precursors who have control.

 

“Hermann. Didn’t like it so much?” They chuckle. “Just left him with us?”

 

“Believe me, I would be in there strangling you right now if it was up to me. I don’t even want to think about what you’re telling him…” He reaches down to take Newt’s hand, to focus on that. “Newt… all those lies… that you have been fighting them all this time… I refuse to have another ten years of your life stolen. Our life. Come back to me… just come back to me.”

 

“Hermann…” Newt’s voice, and Hermann meets his eyes, sees the strain on him. 

 

“Yes, talk to me.”

 

“I have… such a fuckin’ headache…”

 

A desperate little laugh escapes Hermann, and he bends down, kissing Newt’s forehead.    
“Of course you do… all that garbage in there to clear out. But you can. You will.”

 

“I’m sorry…” He gulps down a sob, squeezes his eyes shut. “I swear, I-- I--”

 

He twitches and stills, and Hermann straightens, releasing his hand. “ _ Ich kann mir auch nicht vorstellen, was sie durchgemacht haben _ . Save your apologies for when we are free to talk… until then, know that I know-- I know they horrify you also.”

 

He goes to the box he’d collected, digging through the things that Newt had once left behind. He brings over a sweatshirt, laying it over Newt like a blanket. It wasn’t so much that Newt had left this behind-- Hermann had taken it, when they had briefly been completely attached. Before Newt slipped away from him and from the PPDC, Hermann had… he must have borrowed it once, it was in his laundry. And then Newt was leaving and so Hermann did not return the sweatshirt. He has an old backup pair of Newt’s glasses, he has photographs, he has Newt’s music on his phone, and he has every letter he’s ever received. 

 

“What’s this?” The precursors demand of him.

 

“This is Newt’s. This is Newt.”

 

He places the glasses over Newt’s face, the precursors holding still, confused, as he does so. He can take them back later, but Newt hadn’t looked quite right without them… he has to admit it’s reassuring to see them.

 

“How bad is it in there?” Tendo asks, as Hermann starts the music playing on his phone, placing it near Newt’s head before he allows himself to be drawn away.

 

“You don’t want to know. And I would rather not say. Next time I go in, the kill switch is in my hands, no one else’s. He needs me-- I need him. I need him.”

 

“Hermann… I don’t know about that.”

 

“I do. If I cannot save him, then… I don’t know. I am half myself without him. There is a place in my head where he still lives, where I have tried to fight the way I cling to him, and I can’t-- Seeing his face again, seeing what he has been through… If I can’t fight them, what’s it all for? How can I have helped to save the world twice, and fail to save him? I should have known when he pulled away that something was wrong, that he wouldn’t-- I can’t fail him again.”

 

“You can’t make saving Newt into an obsession.” Tendo’s voice drops to a near-whisper. “You want to rewrite history to fit your narrative, brother, you want a story where saving him’s your shot at redemption for whatever you think you didn’t do… but you’re forgetting everything you did do, and you’re forgetting everything you couldn’t possibly have done. This way madness lies, you hear me?”

 

“I’m in love with him.” Hermann shrugs. 

 

“Yeah, I knew that maybe a week into knowing you.” Tendo raises an eyebrow. “Figured it out when he put himself in quarantine and you lost it waiting for him to be cleared. For the record, I didn’t figure out how Newt felt-- no chance to. We were talking about Jaeger tech back at the academy and he pulls this letter out of his pocket, tells me he’s going to marry the guy who coded them if it’s the last thing he does.”

 

“Honestly…” He grumbles, but only because he has to. If he cannot cling to the old irritation at Newt’s over-the-top antics and proclamations, he might just weep. So many wasted years… 

 

“Our boy wears his heart on his sleeve.” Tendo says, wincing after the words are out, with the realization that he can’t currently, perhaps.

 

“I don’t know why everyone insists on calling him a ‘boy’…”

 

“He’d rather be called our boy Newt than Dr. Geiszler.” A shrug. 

 

“Yes, he would… Tendo, thank you. I will shout about this, I will fight, I may throw things… but I am glad you are here.”

 

“Yeah. Me, too.”

 

“I need to be alone with him. You can take the PONS equipment out of the room if you’re worried, but I need to be alone with him.”

 

“I don’t think the PONS equipment is the be-all and end-all of everyone’s worries.”

 

“The backup plan was your idea. His things, not going back into the Drift, but having his things. Tendo--  _ please _ . I have his letters, and they are private. I cannot and will not put them in his hands and let him read them for himself while the precursors have control of him, he can’t be unstrapped, and I cannot risk-- But I can read them to him. Alone.”

 

Tendo mulls this over a long moment, nodding slowly.

 

“Guards outside, microphones off, you’ll be monitored through the one-way glass. Look-- I trust you. But not everyone does, because you went in there with the precursors in his head… We just need to show them they can. You’ve got this.”

 

“Thank you.”

 

“Yeah, well… I don’t think you picked up any precursor in the Drift, brother, but I think you came away with a whole lotta Newt. So I really don’t want to see what you’d do if I couldn’t make something work.”

 

Hermann chuckles. He can think of several times over the past two decades where he would have hated to be told he had anything in common with Newt at all… but it warms him now. 

 

“To be fair, I was a stubborn bastard before he ever met me.”

 

“Yeah, but you used to follow the rules. Now you’re hacking into secure prison areas and threatening to put PPDC personnel into comas… He’d love that.”

 

“I hope he does.”

 

Tendo clears everyone out, and Hermann rolls a stool up to Newt’s bedside, waiting until they’re alone as he looks through the letters.

 

“Don’t worry, don’t struggle, just listen. Listen to the sound of my voice, listen to your words… let them find you. Whether or not you have full control, let it all reach you. Maybe this is what you need… to have your real self nourished. To rest and be fed so that you can fight again… Just listen and try to rest. We can fight them again tomorrow, but you have earned your rest, dear.”

 

He selects one, with a secret smile curling at the corners of his mouth. 

 

“Dear Hermann…” He keeps an eye on Newt-- the impassive upwards gaze of the precursors, but he will draw a flicker of Newt out. “You were absolutely right.”

 

And there it is, even if it’s only a flicker. But he had told him to rest, that he could listen without fighting. 

 

“You were absolutely right.” Hermann repeats. “Anchorage…  _ sucks ass _ this time of year. What’s the deal with making all the scientists run laps, anyway? I’m protesting, I have never been so sore in my life. I had to do an obstacle course, when am I ever going to need that in real life? But it’s worth it, you were right about that, too. It’s incredible being a part of this all. I tell myself if you could do it then I can do it. If you want to know a secret, sometimes I’m not sure about that. Sometimes I lie here at night and everything’s sore and the room is freezing, and only one other person even treats me decently, and I think I might not be able to hack it. But it’s okay. I don’t listen to that part of my brain, he’s an asshole.”

 

There’s another flicker of Newt there, and Hermann blinks back a sudden wellspring of emotion and reaches down to take his hand. 

 

“Part of my brain is always going to be an asshole, but that’s okay. That’s nothing new.” He continues, fighting a tremor in his voice, in his hand. “You’ve done it and you’ve told me I can do it, and the good parts of my brain all know I can do it. So I’m going to do it. I just hope that when I get out, you’ll be waiting for me. I mean I hope we might be assigned to the same ‘dome, but now they’re building so many and I don’t know. I know when I think about getting to work side by side with you, or lab-by-lab, the cold bothers me less, and so does the soreness. Everything bothers me less, because soon we’ll be rocking K-Sci together.”

 

Hermann’s thumb strokes over Newt’s hand, and he carefully turns the letter over, laying it across his knee so he won’t need to take his other hand from Newt’s.

 

“When I’m here, I feel like I miss you even though we’ve never really met. I wish I had been here last year. But it’s all going to be okay soon enough, because we will. Everything you’ve told me about the academy, it’s been like you’ve said, and I know you can’t talk much about the ‘dome and the real thing, but everything that you have told me, I’m just fired up to be there, too. Yours… Newt.”

 

He dares look to Newt’s eyes again, and he can see him there. Even if he can’t move or speak of his own accord, he is present.

 

“Dear Hermann…” He picks out another letter. “Please tell me you’ll be at the conference. I’ve been dying working with all these squares. I hoped that someone would be cool, but everyone in my lab is an old man with a serious lack of vision. I’m getting so much pushback on every idea but I’m not hearing many alternatives. I would give anything to have you here. You and me, we could be the young blood in this place, shaking things up and getting things done.”

 

Newt’s breath hitches, his mouth opens, closes. Hermann gives him a moment, stroking his hand.

 

“It’s all right.” He soothes. “You remember writing this one?”

 

Newt shakes his head, expression crumpling. “Conference… Not the conference.”

 

“You were so full of hope before then. I would re-read the letter… so often.” Hermann admits. “Thinking about how it all went wrong, yes, but not only that. But, all right…”

 

He returns the letter to its place, and brings out another.

 

“Something new-- this is one I wrote for you, and never sent.” 

 

The tension that had gripped Newt when he had worked to speak relaxes. He remains there, his eyes alive, making no further attempt to fight for physical control.

 

“Dear Newton… I love you. There, I have said it. I love you still, I always have. How can I begin to say how incandescent you were when first we wrote? I love you terribly. Perhaps I always will, how can I say? I lie in bed at night and think of how it all went wrong, and I love you. I rest my hand over my chest and imagine we touch. I imagine a truer intimacy than I have ever touched. I imagine that with you.”

 

“Poetry.” A huff of amusement, too soft and strained to be the precursors mocking him. Newt. “You h-hypocrite, you…  _ Poetry _ .”

 

“You are a thorn in my side, you miserable little man.” He reads, with a fond chuckle. “I hope I bleed the rest of my life. I don’t want to stop loving you, even if I should. I don’t want to hear a word against you from some well-meaning colleague who thinks I could be over you, or who thinks I never should have fallen in love. I don’t care. No one else understands about us. Even now you make me better. I hope you always will. They don’t understand us, and I wish that I could make them understand you, but I’m not sorry if they don’t understand us. What we are isn’t for anyone else… if they can’t see how we work, I don’t care. But I would make them understand you. Your commitment, your dedication, and the way you wear your victories, our victories… I would ask the world to understand you even if they can never understand how I could love you still. You deserve so much more recognition and respect, and I should be the first to give it to you, but I keep it my dirty little secret.”

 

Hermann swallows hard, his hand moving from Newt’s up to his cheek. 

 

“I know who you are and I love you for it, and it hurts too much to put that part of myself out there again. Maybe if I could tell you any of this, you would forgive me… but the likelihood of my sending this to you is low. I don’t have your bravery, perhaps. I hope someday I will prove myself wrong. I don’t know how to make things right and I can’t bear to ask and be told it’s not possible… but I want it more than anything. I want to be… Yours, Hermann.”

 

Newt sighs, head lolling against Hermann’s hand. Exhausted, but himself. 

 

“It’s all right now.” Hermann promises. “Just rest… we can pick the fight up again later. You deserve to rest. Listen to your music until I need to go and charge my phone…”

 

He goes to the one-way glass and taps, only able to meet his own eyes, but hoping to communicate well enough that he is done for the day, that they can come back in if they must. And perhaps he can convince Tendo to let him spend the night in the bed beside Newt’s. Uncomfortable and heavily guarded is no deterrent when it means staying together.

**Author's Note:**

> (because I was utterly frustrated in getting a proper playlist made before posting this, I'm just going to list Newt's playlist to Hermann here:  
> 1) Drift Away- Dobie Grey  
> 2) Goin' Out of my Head- Little Anthony and the Imperials  
> 3) Save Me- Queen  
> 4) Brain Damage/Eclipse- Pink Floyd  
> 5) Somebody's Watching Me- Rockwell  
> 6) Ring of Fire- Johnny Cash  
> 7) Planet Schmanet, Janet!- RHPS soundtrack  
> 8) (entire Floor Show)- RHPS Soundtrack  
> 9) Superheroes- RHPS Soundtrack  
> 10) Demons- Imagine Dragons  
> 11) The Man Who Sold the World- David Bowie
> 
> So now you know. He also sent a bunch of screenshots of screeching and pointing Donald Sutherland and, once, an article on his old work with cloning tissue)


End file.
